This anniversary of the glorious uprising of our people in 1976 comes as
the Zionist enemy is renewing its efforts to usurp Arab land, displaying its
insatiable appetite for Palestinian territory and its undisguised lust for
Arab land from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Gulf. Our people have
recorded and continue to record epics of heroism, glory, strength, and
vigour in their ongoing defence of the sanctity of the land whose soil our
grandfathers toiled. As ever this land remains the sacred tablet on which
our people and our nation inscribe epics of defiance, courage, and martyrdom
in their unyielding struggle to defend Arab land and to assert the rights
perpetually denied them by powers intoxicated by Judeo-Christian mythology
and their own self-importance. The history of Palestine, Jordan, Syria,
Iraq, Lebanon, and Egypt - and of all our homelands - attests to our
unrelenting commitment to reject the imposition of external values and
colonial hegemony.

Today our children are held hostage to the intolerable cycle of violence
brought to our shores over fifty years ago by a chosen people and their
Western sponsors whom we never chose nor were asked to choose. As our
children bleed for crimes not their own, our brothers and sisters in
Palestine are forging their own destiny through acts of valour, sacrifice,
and legendary defiance against the Zionist war machine and its many
nefarious appendages.

As the last 31 months of renewed Intifada attest, the resiliency of our
spirit and the valour of our resistance cannot be broken and our people do
not hesitate to raise their few weapons of self-defence against the many
weapons directed against them by the ferociously arrogant, vicious, and
fascist Zionist aggressors who spare no effort attempting to uproot them.

Upon the rock of our people's defiance the Israeli offensive has been
shattered, along with its purpose to undermine our will to prolong the
intifada and resistance movement despite every obstacle. This process has
yielded undeniable proof of the consistency between our people's words and
deeds. The defence of our legitimate rights is not mere rhetoric, but an
inviolable principle that cannot be separated from the holiness of our land
and every drop of blood shed by our comrades and martyrs to thwart the
powers who concert their energies against us. The Anglo-American barbarians
have confirmed our worst fears in their eagerness to wage an illegal and
savage war of aggression against Iraq, a proud land rich in history,
dignity, and culture. The neo-fascist English speakers dispatched by
Washington, with the shameless consent of London, are the opposite of
liberating troops, as the Bush Administration portrays them; instead they
are forces of occupation advancing a global conspiracy to seize not only the
land of Palestine and the land of Iraq, but also the land of the whole Arab
Nation, in a futile attempt to replace our dignity with the notion to
surrender in the face of great adversity. By perpetrating unspeakable
crimes and massacres against our people in Iraq, the Western soldiers expose
their own and their governments' desire to eradicate the great achievements
of the Iraqi people and to hasten a total Arab capitulation to
Zionist-American designs.

In order to further the regional plans harboured by right-wing Israeli
policymakers, as well as to subject the wealth of the Arab Nation to their
own imperialist plundering, the Hawks in the American Administration are
endeavouring to mould international opinion in favour of disregarding the
most rudimentary sense of morality and human values in the relations between
countries and peoples. But little do they realize that the fraternal
Palestinian, Lebanese, and Iraqi people are motivated by their legendary
defiance to surmount all obstacles placed before them - and that their
defiance grows with the number of US troops, missiles, and bombers being
used as proxies for the Zionist Entity. Our people will not stray from
their own path or be misled to abandon their contempt for the menace now
being posed and escalated by
Washington, London and Tel Aviv.

In the deepest sanctuary of their hearts, our people cherish and revere the
significance of the Day of the Land, which continues to symbolize their
devotion to confront the savage imperialist ploys which for decades have
been directed against them, and which currently have assumed unimaginable
and intolerable proportions, jeopardizing our land, our rights and our very
identity, even the identity of future generations. The US-led invasion must
and will be crushed by the defiance and militancy of the Iraqi people and of
all our Arab peoples who now more than ever are called upon to affirm the
resoluteness of their commitment to their land and their sacred obligation
to defend it by taking the following steps:

1. To march forward in pursuit of practical means to implement the will to
defend every part of Arab territory. To take immediately useful, popular
steps to assist Iraq's glorious defiance and valiant resistance, especially
by arranging for the flow of Arab volunteers to fight in defence of Arab
rights and honor.

2. To set up means for exerting continuous popular pressure on the Arab
official regimes to push them to take practical steps against the savage
aggression against fraternal Iraq, most importantly by denying any
logistical concessions to the aggressor forces, such as by opening their
territories or sharing water or oil supplies with them. It is impermissible
that our wealth and our lands should be commandeered for the sake of
aggression and for rationalizing this backslide into ancient European
primitivism. All foreign bases must be expelled.

3. The connection of the Arab people with the worldwide popular campaign of
opposition to the aggression must be deepened in every possible realm of
political, academic, and informational exchanges so as to spawn a united
effort to confront this loathsome McCarthyism against humanity.

4. We must develop the Islamic and Christian religious dimension of
opposition to the aggression, exposing the internal discrepancies and
purposeful manipulation of what might be termed Christian Zionism, which
seeks to discredit and exploit the Arab region and the world at large.

5. Popular participation in the support of Iraqi steadfastness must be
developed in terms of both moral and material support. We must be creative
and efficient in our struggle to counteract the massive effort to subjugate
the Arab Nation and its future to the aggressive plans America has drafted
in conformity to Israeli advice.

6. A comprehensive Arab-Islamic front must be established to draw attention
to, and to direct measures against the Zionist imperialist aggression in our
region.

7. The international community and its mechanisms must be called upon to
reprimand the war crimes being committed - as thoroughly documented in the
press ­ by the Anglo-American forces of occupation. A blunt denunciation of
these practices must be secured from international institutions and groups,
as well as from civic and social organizations. There must be a coordinated
appeal for humanity to abide its responsibility to demand an end to this
illegal
aggression.

8. Representatives of different nationalities must be organized to serve as
human shields in Iraq. We are certain that our people and our Arab Nation
will be able to defy this heinous aggression by means of our own solidarity,
by focusing the efforts of all decent people in our Arab Nation and
throughout the world, and by continuing to decry the wantonness of the
US-led aggression.

The Day of the Land is a day of glory for our Arab Nation and indeed for all
freedom-loving sectors of humanity. It is a day which affirms the sacred
right of all people to choose their own future on their own terms and
without external interference, far removed from the military threats and
humiliating demands of powers obsessed with reshaping the world in their own
image.

The Political Bureau
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine